Java Dynamic Networking with Jini Technology, Part 2

art 1 of this series began an introduction to Jini™ technology, an open software architecture that enables Java™ dynamic networking, which developers can use to create highly adaptive distributed systems. It briefly described the approach that Jini technology takes to tracking, selecting, and assembling services into a running system. Part 2 concludes the introduction with an overview of the various mechanisms that Jini technology provides to support distributed component interactions. It also identifies some common dynamic networking problems to which Jini technology is typically applied today.

Distributed Component Interactions
As any application developer knows, much of the work when coding a system involves coordinating the interactions of various system components and the flow of work through the system. This leaves developers to contend with a number of considerations: Will an event over here trigger a reaction over there? Or should component A make a proactive request for component B to perform some work? Should A wait for a response, or would it be better to communicate asynchronously? How should a transaction be structured so that multiple related operations either complete or fail in a consistent way? A sound distributed application architecture should provide support for such distributed component interactions—and Jini technology does.